


Ain't Got No Suitcase

by bowie_queen



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Bad Hep, Fiery Perspective, Gen, Job Disatisfaction, Labyrinth References, Need a Suitcase, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24529693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowie_queen/pseuds/bowie_queen
Summary: Being part of the Fire Gang may look like lots of fun, but for one fiery it's not the ideal job.  Then he encounters Sarah and his whole life is changed.An answer (of sorts) to a recent LFFL challenge.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	Ain't Got No Suitcase

AIN'T GOT NO SUITCASE

He was minding his own business. As he always was. As he always tried to. He liked watching nature. The birds flying, the leaves changing colours with the seasons, the bugs scurrying and slithering across the logs and rotting vegetation that made up their home. 

The forest was older than him. Older than all of them. It provided them a home when the Fire Mountain had ceased to exist. Life had been different back then. He could be himself. He didn't have to belong to a group of similar looking, but intrinsically different critters. 

The Fire Gang. The eternally partying, limb removing, boisterous, noise making, set-your-teeth-on-edge, chilly-downers that he had been stuck with in this forest of trickery and deceit. The carbon copies of him that he had been forced to call brothers, when his own family had been reclaimed by the fire of that long ago eruption from whence they came. Born of fire, reclaimed by fire. It would have given him pride to have joined in eternal flame with his true blood and brood. 

What even was a chilly-down? He certainly hadn't learnt about that dance and song when he was a young fireling. It was a mockery of the dóiteán dance of fiery tradition. Instead of the elegant dóiteán, all they ever wanted to do was chilly down. He wondered what it would be like to chilly up. Or maybe fiery down? Nippy down? Glacial Down? Brisk down? Frigid Down? Why did they always have to chilly down? He could enjoy a perky humid up, or a sweltering up, or a muggy up? They were fieries after all, not Icies.

But this was his familial unit for better or worse. He had a job to do. Whenever there were runners, they had to do what they did best. Remove limbs and distract the runner. He loathed it. He just wanted peace and quiet. He enjoyed his odd moments of solitude. It never lasted long. He was having that rare moment now amongst the thorny brambles and glittery shrubs of the forest. Crows called, wind rustled, and his own mind was soothed and sated.

He heard his name being called over the din of his own thoughts. Of course, he could never escape for long. He picked up his orange-red body with a deep sigh and made his way to the four other gang members. 

"We have a runner," a stage whisper came from a branch to his right. He spotted a young dark haired teenager making her way through the trees, so he swung his body up into a tree to his left and waited. 

One of his comrades yelled out and that was their cue. He started tapping sticks against the branch before he jumped out of the tree to scare the child. 

And scare her they did. It was his impression she didn't particularly enjoy their efforts to pull her head off. The blame didn't really lie with her. Her head didn't come off. She pointed out the truth of this in her next statement. 

Another sigh. He played his part. He always did. Throwing his head on cue. Swinging off branches as he was expected to. He attempted to play golf with his own head as the ball and his leg as the club. Crude. The Fire Gang enjoyed that trick. He didn't. It got leaves and sticks matted into his mane that would take at least an hour to remove. He prided himself on his well kept mane and fur. No-one could ever accuse him of letting his fur mat and get straggly. 

Their job wasn't sophisticated or elegant. It was crude and rough. Not his style. He had heard of some of the Labyrinth residents doling out wisdom or partaking in welcoming the runner upon their arrival into the walls of the Labyrinth. He liked the sound of that. Much more than scaring the runner with detachable limbs and fire. 

He didn't even like fire. It was so destructive and he'd rather plant a tree than set fire to it. Of course his gang mates couldn't know this. They'd laugh. Or worse. They'd break their code of honour and remove his limbs for his traitorous behaviour. 

So as they chased the young brunette through the trees towards the dead end; the sheer face of the cliff that marked the edge of their territory, he considered slipping away. What was the point? What was the bloody point? 

"Throw your head," the lead fiery commanded down to him. With reluctance but an air of enthusiasm he tossed his own head up to the height of the wall, his ears flapping to give him some longevity as he taunted the girl in a half-hearted manner. 

She seemed a sweet child. He didn't know why she was there. He never involved himself in politics. He didn't know much about humans either. Apart from they didn't like fire, they didn't have removable limbs and they scared easily. This one at least had put up some fight by tossing their heads away. Good on her. He was often tempted to do the same with his obnoxious co-fieries.

It was on his second attempt that his whole arm dislodged and went up with his head. But instead of following his head's lead it disappeared from sight. 

“Blast,” he swore as he tried to catch his head with one arm, and failed miserably. He screwed his eyes shut as a wave of pain washed over him to see his beautiful mane littered with leaves and sticks and creepy crawlies. He scooped his head off the leaf strewn ground, and plonked it back on his shoulders. A cockroach landed unceremoniously on his nose. He swatted it off with his one remaining hand, watching it sail through the air and smash into the rocks. He shook his head, dislodging a few more foreign objects, completely oblivious to his leader barking orders at him to continue throwing his head. 

That dwarf he had seen around their forest a few times before, had rescued the girl out of their clutches, so the fire gang retrieved their limbs and started muttering about the loss of their game. They wouldn't be down for long. They never were. They were loud, obnoxious and perpetually optimistic. It was enough to make him want to throw away his own head. The thought of doing just so was a moment’s joy amidst his despair of doing the same thing, day in, day out for the rest of his existence. Even now they were probably planning a celebration of their loss. They would sit and talk for hours around the fire, arguing and debating before they agreed that they should - and this should come as no surprise - Chilly Down to reward themselves for their failure. 

He was frantically trying to retrieve his missing arm scrambling around the rock face, looking in recesses and under tree limbs. His gang member colleagues were calling to him, but his sole focus was his arm. Darkness was starting to fall and he had to admit defeat. His arm was gone. 

"My arm," he lamented as he returned to the gang. His mates stood around the bonfire they'd just lit laughing and regaling each other in their efforts to stall the girl. 

"Damn that dwarf," said one. 

"But did you see my snake eyes?" Said another. 

"My ear flapping was in fine form today, fine form," a third sung out. 

"Bit lacklustre from you though," accused their leader, turning to him, all eight red eyes blazing their agreement as all four pinned him with their looks. 

"We could hear the lack of enthusiasm as you taunted that girl," their leader shook his red head. "Bad hep." 

"Bad hep," the other 3 agreed. 

"I lost my arm," he pointed out in his defence. Weak. Very weak. 

"We have it," they chorused. 

"You can have it back when you tell us, brother, what is with that bad hep?" 

"Brothers, that's against the rules- "

"You can not chilly down without your arm, is that what you want?" 

He rubbed his stump where his arm should be. He couldn't answer. 

"Stand tall with the fire gang," he sung.

"You let that girl get away," one of his accusers snapped. "Kingy won't be pleased."

"We haven't had a runner come this far in so long," another groused. "And that was a missed opportunity." 

"You party - we party all the time," he countered. "We don't need a runner to chilly down." 

It was apparent the fire gang devoured the experience of having an audience. They weren’t very popular with any other inhabitants of the Goblin Kingdom. Even the goblins kept their distance. They were after all, the most annoying, infuriating, aggravating -

"Brother you are no longer one of us," the leader stood raising his own hand before throwing it down in challenge. "You are no longer welcome to chilly down with the fire gang. You risked the King no longer sending us bad food. Do you expect us to eat  **_good_ ** food? Do you hate us that much?" 

"You know we sing all day about not having cares or problems, but some of us actually do have cares," he barked back, uncertain how to fight for something he didn’t want anyway. 

"We have no problems, we have no suitcases. That's our motto." 

"I have problems," he said. "Maybe one day I would like a suitcase." 

The fire gang erupted in laughter. He thought of the dark haired girl he'd seen today. She was determined to escape them. Perhaps it was his turn. 

"I'd like to have clothes or a gold mine to hang me up," he said and spun on his heel followed by the chortle and howls of laughter from his previous gang members. 

He went his own way back into the thick trees, gang-less, armless (one arm-less anyway) and directionless. 

But not without purpose. He was going to make his own suitcase. 

He had found large leaves, bark, sticks and fibrous material throughout the forest to make a suitcase. He worked away using one arm and a leg, with the discordant hum of his ex-gang chilly downing deep in the forest. 

"Bad hep, indeed," he laughed to himself. 

*****

Months later he had heard from a stray Goblin that the girl had defeated the King and had even destroyed a chunk of the Goblin City. The King had also raged against the four other fieries for having lost the fifth one, and for letting the girl get away too easily. They tried to placate Jareth by telling him they still had the arm of the fifth fiery. The King hadn't been impressed. They indeed had been punished with good food. They were even given some jewelry and clothes to worry about. They would not be very happy. That was exactly what the fire gang hated.

He missed his arm. But his independence suited him. He traversed the Labyrinth, meeting new critters and gathering items of interest to collect in his suitcase. One such item was a ruby red ring that he'd won off the Wiseman. He prized this above all other treasures he had gathered. Rumour had it that the ring belonged to the girl; the girl that had resulted in his arm being confiscated. The girl that ended his lifetime of chilly downs. 

He thanked the ring, and thus the girl every night for allowing him to live in peace without having to chilly down or eat bad food or sleep in a dirty bed. He no longer had to shake his pretty little head or tap his pretty little feet. He was his own fiery. Free from the shackles of chilly down employment. 

"Ain't got no suitcase," he said as he lay under the crystal moon. "I have got a suitcase now, and maybe one day I will have some real estate." 

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is a response to the LFFL 2020 Anniversary challenge to write a Labyrinth retelling from the perspective of a character that isn't Sarah or Jareth. Hope it is enjoyed.


End file.
